James Avoka Asamani

Prof. James Avoka Asamani is a registered nurse and a health systems scientist with expertise in the health workforce, health planning and policy, health economics and financing, health systems modelling, and healthcare management. Dr Asamani has published widely in these areas of expertise with more than 55 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. He is currently the Health Workforce Team Lead for the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region, covering 47 countries. Before then, he worked as WHO Technical Advisor on Human Resources Health Systems, leading technical support for 20 countries across East and Southern Africa, and previously as Health Economics Advisor in the WHO Ghana Office. He was also a Health Workforce Planner at the Ghana Health Service until 2018.

Prof Asamani’s work has led to transformative policy and investment actions in several countries, collectively stimulating more than US$100 million in health workforce investments since 2019. He is one of a few workforce planning and health labour market methodologists who has developed tools and methods currently used by more than 15 countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Americas and Europe.

James is a Commonwealth Scholar with a PhD in Health Sciences with Health Professions Education specialising in health modelling and workforce planning from the North-West University in South Africa. He also has an M.Phil. degree in Nursing, specialising in Healthcare Management and Human Resources for Health, from the University of Ghana and an M.Sc. cum lade in Health Economics and Health Policy from the University of Birmingham, UK.

Dr Asamani is an extraordinary Associate Professor at the Centre for Health Professions Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, North-West University, South Africa, where he contributes to research and supervises doctoral students. He is also an editor in several globally reputable scientific journals.